Where Is The Water on Mars?

A couple of months back I took the Caltech course “Science of the Solar System” with Prof. Mike Brown. I got so inspired by the material that Prof. Brown presented to us, that I decided to write an article on each of the 4 main chapters of the course – Mars, Jupiter and big planets in the solar system, the smallest bodies in the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life.

I have always been interested in Mars and everything about it, so this article came naturally after the tons of information that I learned during the course. After it finished, I revisited all the material, did my own additional research and wrote this article (which feels more like a research paper right now).

If you want to know if Mars ever had water and could it support life then this article is for you! You will also find interesting information about the Martian geological history, the spacecrafts that humans have sent to Mars, how do these spacecrafts reach the red planet and what did they find there. You will also learn a lot of curious facts about Mars, what did it most probably look like billions of years ago and much more.

The article/paper is 35 pages with more than 130 high resolution images that support the explanations. It took me an enormous effort to put it together with countless hours spent in research and then refining the materials. Thank you to all my friends that helped me with suggestions and spotted mistakes and inaccuracies (see the Credits section).

I would like to thank one more time Prof. Brown for being the amazing teacher that he is and for inspiring me to write this first of four papers.

Have a nice and pleasant read! Feel free to give me some feedback, what you liked and didn’t like and how can I improve these in the future here.

The paper is best viewed in Adobe Acrobat Reader with two pages seen at a time (View -> Page Display -> Two Page Scrolling).

For tips on how to live a luxurious life – a humorous article about what one needs to live on Mars, click HERE!

If want to know how we, humans, are planning to land on the red planet in the 2030s and what are the challenges that we face in this epic journey, read our 2-parts article “The First Human Steps on Mars” HERE!